Cambria County Pioneers, 1910, by James L. Swank, Cambria County, PA - Johnstown Flood Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cambria/ ________________________________________________ CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS HON. CYRUS L. PERSHING A Collection of Brief Biographical and other Sketches Relating to the Early History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. by JAMES M. SWANK PHILADELPHIA: No. 261 SOUTH FOURTH STREET, 1910. A LESSON FROM THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD. 135 A LESSON FROM THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD. WRITTEN IN JUNE, 1889, AFTER WITNESSING THE DESTRUCTION CAUSED BY THE FLOOD OF MAY 31. IN the world we live in and in the universe of which it forms a part there are many evidences of a stupendous plan, as was long ago demonstrated by philosophical writers. The sun is set in the heavens; the planets revolve in their orbits; the earth turns on its axis; the seasons come and go; the sea ebbs and flows. The doctrine of evolution may to some minds account for physical growth and development, but it fails to account for the existence of a plan in the creation of the universe. A plan logically implies a planner, as has also been pointed out by philosophical writers. Not only are there evidences of a grand plan which must have had a planner, but there are evidences without number of the existence of immutable laws for the government of the universe. The sun is not only set in the heavens but it gives forth heat and light with unfailing regularity; the planets revolve in their orbits, through millions and millions of miles of space, with such precision that their coming and going and their positions toward one another may be calculated with mathematical exactness; the earth not only turns on its axis but it turns so exactly that from day to day and from year to year there is not the variation of a second of time in its revolutions; the seasons come and go in regular order; the proud waves of the tempestuous seas are stayed by unchanging boundaries. We can not conceive of the existence of immutable laws without conceding the existence of a law-maker. We have, then, in one person or essence, a planner, or creator, and a law- maker. Is it reasonable to suppose that the creator of the universe and the maker of the laws which govern it should cease to control the work of his 136 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. own hands? Certainly not. Therefore he rules; he is the great ruler. If the planner of the universe, the maker of its laws, and the administrator of these laws be one and the same person, or essence, it must necessarily follow that whatever he doeth he doeth well. He would not do ill with his own handiwork. The planets do not crash into one another, nor does the sun fail to give heat and light, or the earth fail to produce food for man and beast. He would not do ill with his own creatures. Is it conceivable, therefore, that the creator and ruler of the universe and the author of our existence should punish us after death because we had been weak when we should have been strong, or because, like Bartimeus of old, we were blind and could not see the way? Is not our punishment on earth enough? We suffer in the flesh and with mental agony for violations of the great creator's laws by ourselves or by those who have gone before us, and death itself, the common lot, is a great terror, from which we would all escape if we could. The inborn hope of immortality, the promises of the New Testament, and the precepts and example of the Founder of Christianity, whether he be accepted as the Son of God or as the greatest of all the teachers and prophets, are incentives to all men to lead upright and useful lives and to prove themselves in all things worthy of the divinity that is within them. No wise man will undervalue these influences; they have made the human race all that it is to- day. But that the poor creature who was born with vicious and criminal instincts, or who became both vicious and criminal through the influence of evil surroundings which he had not chosen, is to be punished after death is a doctrine which rests for acceptance solely upon the theory that the creator and the ruler of the universe and the author of our being is a vindictive God. But vindictiveness is not an attribute of the Almighty, while mercy is. Surely infinite mercy can not be less merciful than the evenhanded justice of this world, which imposes only penalties that are commensurate with the offenses against which they are directed. Punishment after death, added to the punishment of death itself, would bear no just relation to A LESSON FROM THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD. 137 even the gravest of earthly offenses. Who can sound the deepest depths of even a murderer's temptation, or accurately measure the inherited defects of his physical and mental and moral nature? The Ten Commandments contain no hint of either rewards or punishments after death. The punishments of the Old Testament are distinctly of this world; nor does the Old Testament anywhere so far as we have observed speak of rewards to the righteous after death. In the Fifth Commandment we are told to "honor thy father and thy mother "-for what reason?-" that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments can not be inferred from the Old Testament accounts of the death and burial of the patriarchs, kings, and prophets. "Abraham gave up the ghost and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years, and was gathered to his people." "And Isaac gave up the ghost and died and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days." "And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons he yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people." "Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die, and he charged Solomon, his son, saying I go the way of all the earth. So David slept with his fathers." In these and other Old Testament accounts the dying express no hope of future reward or fear of future punishment. Indeed they say nothing about a future state. In the Lord's Prayer every Christian child is given lasting impressions of a Heavenly Father which are loving, soothing, and strengthening. "Deliver us from evil" does not even hint of punishment after death as an evil from which we ask to be delivered. Why should the spirit of this prayer ever be departed from by those who teach us more of this Heavenly Father than our Saviour himself has taught us in its simple words and in many other examples and precepts which he has set before us and commended to our hearts? If it shall be answered that there are passages in the Old and the New Testaments, but particularly in the New Testament, which are in conflict with the above views 138 CAMBRIA COUNTY PIONEERS. of God's justice and mercy, and which appear to confirm the doctrine of future punishment, we ask the reader to consider that these passages have been variously interpreted by conscientious and scholarly Bible students, and that they should be read in connection with other passages which clearly set forth God's love for his children and not apart from them. Many statements in both the Old and the New Testament are now generally discredited by reverent Bible critics; why not also those statements which are not in harmony with our conception of the Great Creator as our Heavenly Father? Even the Sermon on the Mount is not free from criticism by reverent Bible students. We have been led into this train of thought by the contemplation of the awful calamity which has just swept nearly 2,500 persons from time into eternity, in the twinkling of an eye and without a moment's warning that they had reached the end of all earthly things. Shall it be said that these innocent victims of man's violation of nature's laws must be punished hereafter? The very thought is abhorrent to our sense of infinite justice and mercy. We have also since the flood been impressed by the reflection that among all our acquaintances and in all our reading and in all the sermons to which we have listened we have never heard of a man or woman of evangelical faith who was willing to admit that any of his or her deceased relatives had been consigned to a state of future punishment, no matter how grave their offenses may have been. Apparently all men and all women have faith in the exemption from future punishment of their own friends. The human heart will not condemn its own. Are the affectionate impulses of the human heart to be ignored? Is the logic of its love for its own to count for nothing? What else is the inborn hope of immortality but a trusting faith in the existence of a state of future happiness, adapted, it may be, to our individual capacity to enjoy it? The hope of immortality, if interpreted in a spirit of Christian charity, implies freedom from future punishment for all men, and does not embody the selfish belief that a privileged few, as a special favor, may escape from its awful infliction upon their own persons.